


fate

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [8]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s03e02 Paper Clip, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 06:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11202471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Thirty-two years of sisterhood sounds like forever, she thinks, but is is not enough.





	fate

“I think it's about something we have no personal choice in. I think it's about fate.” - Fox Mulder, 3x02 _Paper Clip_

* * *

 

**1964**

They've discussed names, a little unseriously. Bill had insisted that it would be another boy, so they had agreed unofficially on Charles. (He liked to name the children after family members; there was Billy, and then Melissa was after his mother and Charles after his father. But they hadn't discussed girl names.) 

“I liked that one name you suggested,” Bill offers the next morning. They know the routines of early parenthood well, but he is no less fascinated by the baby, moving his fingers through the sunlight for her to track. “What was it… Dana.”

Maggie smiles; Dana was her favorite of the considered girl names, but she'd figured Bill would never go for it since it wasn't traditional. “Dana Katherine,” she offers, stroking her daughter's downy red hair. The baby snuffles, turning her face into Maggie’s shoulder. “For my grandmother.”

They take the baby home after a few days. Bill goes in first - wisely enough, Missy and Billy tend to be rambunctious, especially right after breakfast. Maggie’s mother has been staying with them, and she embraces Maggie at the door before leaning over the baby carrier. Missy and Billy leap at her before their father stops them. “Go and sit on the couch,” he says in that kind but stern way he has. Billy sticks out his lower lip and stomps over to the couch. Bill scoops up Missy and sets her next to her brother; she swings her legs in excitement.

The kids have been arguing for a few weeks now about whether or not the baby would be a brother or a sister (Billy in favor of the former and Missy of the latter). Maggie opts to sit between them with the baby in her arms so they won't come to blows over who was right. “Kids,” she says. “This is your new sister, Dana.”

Billy pouts, flopping back against the back of the couch, and Bill and her mother swoop in to scold him. But Missy is intrigued, crawling closer to get a look. Dana half-dozes, tiny hands waving in the air. Missy pokes her foot. “Day?”

“Dana,” Maggie corrects, amused. “Don't poke her, sweetie, you have to be gentle.” 

Melissa reaches for the baby again, and Dana catches her sister's finger in her little hand. “Day,” she says, satisfied. 

 

**1969**

The baby is too little to play with Billy yet, so Dana shifts back and forth between her siblings, an ambassador of some sort. She's big enough to be some fun, so Billy takes her on some of his self-professed adventures and brings her back with scraped knees that her dresses don't hide. Others, he insists on going on by himself so Dana ends up back in their room, begging Missy to come play. Most of the time she will. 

They have “sides” in their bedroom, made clear by the stark difference between them. Dana listens to their parents when she's told to keep her room straight and Melissa doesn't, so her side of the floor has permanent piles of dolls and stuffed animals. Her bed is always a rumpled tangle of quilts and sheets; when they make a fort out of blankets and kitchen chairs, Dana always gets the blankets from Missy’s bed. 

Missy is less wild than their brother; she likes to play make-believe. She helps Dana learn to spell big second grade words. Maggie keeps Dana’s hair cut short (and always neat, except for the times she goes to play outside with Billy), but Missy grows hers long so she can feel it blow out behind her in the wind. (She insists, whines at the sight of scissors.) It is always knotted and a pain to brush; their mother encourages her to cut it, and she always refuses. 

Dana gets into a fight with Billy and Missy helps her hide the rabbit Bill is threatening in a lunch box. When she finds it dead two days later, Missy helps her throw a funeral. They bury it under their mother's rose bushes, and Missy scatters a handful of petals over the dirt. 

One Saturday, Maggie finds them in her bathroom playing with her makeup. Dana is sitting on the closed toilet, shorts and a Band-Aid on her knee, whining as Missy pokes at her face with a mascara brush. Missy has already transformed her own face, as well as gotten into her closet and stolen several scarves that she’s woven around her dress. Maggie laughs until she cries before washing their faces and sending them to their room for a time-out.

 

**1972**

The day Dana turns eight is cloudless and sunny, stunningly cold for California, even in February. 

After school, Missy dares her to race home. “We have something to show you,” she whispers seriously. “Billy said you were old enough.” Dana runs fast enough to beat her home, shoes scuffing the new pavement and lunch box banging off of her leg. 

Missy and Billy lead her up into the woods behind their house, so far that Dana’s fingers grow numb from the cold, but she doesn't say anything from the fear that Billy will proclaim her too little and make Melissa take her back. Finally, they reach a little stick structure with what looks like a handmade sign stuck between the sticks. “Billy carved it himself,” Missy tells her. 

Billy stands beside the fort with his arms crossed in front of his chest, spine straight like their father and the naval men he brings home for dinner sometimes, a proud twelve. “I made the fort, too,” he says. “Missy didn't help, she just found me out here and I made her swear not to tell.”

Missy scowls at him, sticking her tongue out. “But I come out here now, too, and now that you're eight, you're old enough.”

Awed, Dana steps closer to the little fort, reaching out to touch the floral sheet as a makeshift door. “Does Mom know you stole a sheet?” she asks slyly. 

“No, and you better not tell her,” Billy says sternly, in his best imitation of their dad. Except their dad would never steal one of their mother’s sheets to use as a door for a fort.

“Shut up, I won't!” She glares fiercely up at him, feeling smaller than usual.

“You can't tell Charlie, either, he's too little, he won't keep it a secret,” Melissa says seriously. “Go check it out, Day, it's really neat.”

Dana grins, drops to the ground (even though she knows her mother will kill her for getting her dress dirty) and crawls inside. It is cool and dark in the fort, shadows on the wall that look almost scary, and a pile of pilfered stuffed animals and toy soldiers and Billy's B-B gun. Dana smiles. Billy grabs the gun and stalks away from the fort, but Melissa crawls in beside her, smiling back as she sits across from Dana and shows her the games they've stuck up here; being in the fort together is companionable, a secret. 

 

**1978**

The most rebellion on Dana’s part comes from taking the long way home from school and taking a few hours longer than necessary, or sneaking out to smoke pilfered cigarettes on the back porch. (Missy can see the brief flicker of light, the red glow, outside her window.) She is testing her boundaries, but when it comes down to it she's still a baby. She still reads under the covers with a flashlight, for God's sake. Melissa waits an hour after bedtime, looking for a muted flashlight beam or for her footsteps across the rug. Silence. She slips out of bed, still fully clothed, and rummages for her shoes on the dark floor. She ties her hair back before tiptoeing across the room and opening the window. 

A light shines in her eyes. “That's really dumb, you know,” Dana says with a sense of self-satisfaction in her tone. 

Melissa makes a face at her, shielding her eyes with her hands. “You should be a cop, Dana, you're very good at pretending you're in charge.”

“I'm just saying it's dumb,” she says, very matter-of-fact. Dana is a very self-righteous fourteen, and it is annoying as hell. The light bounces off her braces as she sets it in her lap. “Billy never sneaks out.”

“Billy's a kiss-up, and it's not as if I'm not careful. I never sneak out when Dad's home.” Melissa keeps her voice to a whisper, even though their mother can sleep through anything. “Besides that, your little cigarette habit hardly makes you Little Miss Responsibility.”

Dana blushes bright red. “That's… different.”

“Suuuuure,” Missy says at length, grinning at her little sister. Dana doesn't smile back, flipping the flashlight on and off. “It's just a party,” she adds. “I'm meeting Lucy around the corner and she's driving, she doesn't drink or anything. I'll be back by one. You should come, you might have fun for once.”

“I'll pass,” she mumbles, tossing the flashlight down beside her on the bed. 

Missy heaves a dramatic sigh, opening the window a little. “Whatever you say,” she groans, hooking her foot in the crook of two tree branches. She looks back to Dana on her bed, bright hair swishing around her face. “You're not gonna mention this to Mom, are you?” she asks cautiously. 

“Not if you don't mention the cigarette thing,” says Dana. Missy snickers, and she lobs a pillow at her head. “Shut up, I didn't know you knew.”

“Consider yourself before you lecture others, little sister,” Melissa says, placing her other foot on the branch and poising herself to swing out. 

“I just worry about you.” Missy positions herself in the tree before looking back at her sister. Dana is resting her chin in her hands. “Haven't you heard about some of those kids? Bad things could happen.”

“Bad things can happen everywhere, Day,” she says. “Quit worrying so much.”

 

**1980**

Their father buys Melissa a car before she leaves for college - a rusty old Volkswagen that seems to fit her. She's delighted with the car, driving Dana and Charlie down to the coast two days before she leaves. Charlie throws rocks into the ocean in the quiet way he has about him. Dana gathers shells as she trudges behind her sister up and down the sand. “You should take some with you,” she offers sheepishly, writing the beginnings of her name in the sand with her big toe ( _ D-A… _ ). 

Missy laughs and tousles her hair. Dana glares at her from under a loose strand hanging over her eyes. “You're such a sap, Dana,” says Missy. “Here, give me one.”

The three of them trail barefoot up the beach, scattering tiny particles of sand along the upholstery, and blast the radio on the way home.

Dana helps her pack that night, folding clothes methodically and putting them into suitcases. She's inherited their mother's neat packing skills. “You can't keep all that, you know,” she tells Melissa, who is digging through flowery-handwritten school notebooks and notes her friends passed.

“Watch me,” Missy taunts and Dana rolls her eyes. She grins; she's going to miss her sister trying to boss her around. More importantly, she's going to miss actually bossing her around. “Are you going to miss me when I'm gone?” 

“Of course not,” Dana says slyly. “I'll get the room to myself.” She bursts into giggles when Missy lobs an English notebook at her head. 

 

**1986**

Dana vanishes to the roof sometime after dessert. Melissa goes upstairs to find her. “It's too cold to sit out on the roof like we used to as kids,” she says, sticking her head out into the November-in-Maryland cold.

Dana looks grumpy, holding a cigarette in one hand. “Thanksgiving is overrated.”

“Believe me, I know, but something tells me you're not in the mood for a rant.” She crawls out onto the roof. “What's up?”

“Stress.” Dana takes a drag on her cigarette. “Med school, and whatever the hell is going on between Dad and Charlie…” 

“He just skipped Thanksgiving, it's not the end of the world,” Melissa says. 

“Mom says tension was building before he even left for college.” Dana exhales, smoke leaving her mouth in a thin rope. 

“You're in med school, Day, you should know better.” Missy waves a hand at the cigarette. 

Dana makes a face. “There's a lot of potential retorts to that, but I won't bother.”

“Good. You know I can beat you in an argument.” Melissa smirks. Dana sticks out her tongue like they're children again, stubs her cigarette out on a roof tile. “C’mon inside, little sister,” Melissa adds, crawling across the roof. “We're too old for this, and I doubt you want Mom to catch you smoking.”

Dana follows her across the sloped surface. She spent the last half of her teen years on the roof, is an expert at navigating them. “Oh, I don't think we could ever be too old for this.”

 

**1993**

“You're telling me a parasite almost ate your brain while you were trapped in the fucking  _ Arctic _ ?” 

“First of all, it was Alaska,” Dana says matter-of-factly. “And second of all, it wouldn't have eaten my brain if I'd been infected. It would've made my actions more erratic, making me a danger to myself and others.”

Melissa shudders. “Sounds horrific.”

“I've stopped expecting anything else from this job.”

She smirks at her sister across the table. “Sooo… any steamy moments with that partner of yours?”

“For the last time, Missy, it's not like that,” Dana says, frustrated. 

“No cuddling for warmth?” she asks innocently. “No lingering touches?”

Dana’s cheeks pink in a way that shows her bluff. “Don't be ridiculous. We were on the brink of death and didn't know who to trust in freezing weather. That's about the furthest thing from romance.”

“Ahh, near death experiences,” Melissa says dramatically. “They ruin everything.” Dana rolls her eyes, punching holes around the rim of her coffee cup with her thumbnail. “Seriously, Dana, you have to stop almost dying on us. What would I do without our cigarette-on-the-roof tradition every holiday?”

“Our more festive of traditions,” Dana deadpans. 

Missy laughs. “Maybe I should cast some sort of protective charm on you,” she says, half-joking - she knows exactly what her sister thinks of stuff like that.

“Maybe you should. Mulder would love that.” Dana smirks. “Near slips like this are part of the job, but sometimes I envy your nice and easy, non-life threatening job.”

“I have a feeling we're both exactly where we need to be in the world,” Melissa tells her seriously.

“Fate? Destiny? If that's telling me I'm going to go to a liver-eating monster, then I'll pass.”

“I thought you caught that guy.”

“We did. It hasn't gone to trial yet, and Mulder says our case is weak.”

“Oh, great.”

Dana rests her hand on her cheek, looking like she's lost in thought. “At least Mom and Dad will have you,” she says. “If something were to happen to me.”

Melissa believes in fate, but she also believes in her sister. “Don't be ridiculous, Day. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

 

**1996**

Her nightmares are haunted by bloodstains on the floorboards and an empty hospital bed. Scully wishes she believed in ghosts, because if she did she'd ask for Mulder to come summon up Melissa. She needs to see her one more time, to apologize.

She drifts to her sister's funeral, holding onto her flowers as some kind of an anchor. Some cousins drift around, offering condolences to her; they probably don't know she's the reason Melissa’s dead. Charlie doesn't show.  _ Traitor,  _ she thinks, furiously. Mulder lingers awkwardly on the edge. She doesn't know why he's here, he only met Melissa a few times. Maybe it's a thank you for going to his father's funeral. He approaches her once and gives her a hug but doesn't hover, leaves after the service. Scully sits alone and stares at her knees. Tear droplets fade into her dress, unseen. 

When they were kids, Melissa helped her bury her pet rabbit in the backyard. She'd scattered rose petals over the grave. Scully pulls a handful of petals from her bouquet and scatters it over the coffin. She trails back into the funeral home silently. She has no idea what to say. The wake is at her mother's house. She sneaks up to the roof but doesn't light a cigarette. She sits alone until she gets too cold. Her dress rips when she climbs back inside. 

Scully goes back home and climbs onto the couch without changing. She twists her cross between her fingers. Its twin is six feet under right now. She watches the spot where Melissa fell and waits for her ghost. Thirty-two years of sisterhood sounds like forever, she thinks, but is is not enough.

 

 


End file.
